This moving artist’s report seeks to equate the experiences of lab rats with those of patients within our healthcare system. Are both simply objects of observation, of intervention? Or are they living beings with a shared power and beauty that can be witnessed at the microscopic level? The author translates her insights from the laboratory into an immediate experience for readers with homemade books whose images raise the minute to the universal.

A key mission of the Barnes Foundation is the promotion of education through art appreciation. Its Art, Well-Being and Medicine program was created in 2017. Practitioners and patients alike experience the Barnes’ vast collection through seven guided exercises; the results can be profound. This article takes the reader into an encounter with art at the Barnes, and shows how the questions raised among colleagues can impact clinical perspectives.

Download the article (pdf) Table of Contents Medical school can install students in locales both familiar and unfamiliar: the darkened hush of a lecture hall,

Both a book and an exhibit, Portrait of Spirit: One Story at a Time by Billy Howard and Maggie Holtzberg offers new perspectives while challenging the way we view the lived disability experience. Using stunning photographs and beautifully written narratives from Portrait of Spirit, this piece serves as an ode to the groundbreaking stories that started it all while advocating for continued societal change for people living with disabilities.

Melissa McCune, SPT takes you into the world of Edgar Degas as he captures the art of physical movement. She shows us how, at a time when art focused on the face, the clothing, perhaps the hands, Degas chose to focus his paintings “on the body as a whole to reveal its objective beauty and intimate connection with the space around it.”

Working with medical students at Penn State University, J.O. Ballard, MD, uses the art of Andrew Wyeth to sharpen their observational skills and help them develop an empathic understanding of the patient’s lived experience of illness.

Perspectives in Art Section Editor Siobhan Conaty discusses the role of physical disability in the life of artist Henri Matisse.